It's Easy To Make Music

How To Play THE SAXOPHONE

To avoid needless confusion Fig. 78 is highly simplified. Itshows, on the saxophone itself, only the pads and keys thatyou press down with your fingers and the inner part of yourhands in order to make the notes. The pads on which your fin-gers operate are numbered 1, 2, 2j/2, 3 and so on up to 13.The keys, which are used chiefly when you are playing highnotes, are lettered A, B, C, D, E, F, plus the octave key.

The pads and keys that are used to make each note are indi-cated in the column under each note. Thus, to make the firstnote, Bb, you press down pads 1, 2, and 3 and 7 with the first,second, third and fourth fingers of your left hand, and pads8, 9, 10 and 12, with the first, second, third and fourth fingersof your right hand.

In the left hand the first, second and third fingers alwaysrest on the same pads, except when you shift the second fingerto the little pad numbered Wi to make A# or Bb. The leftlittle finger must be more versatile, for it plays pad 4 to makeG# or Ab, and must also shift to pads 5, 6 and 7 to make thethree lowest notes.

Much the same thing is true of the right hand. The secondfinger has to shift to pad 13 to make F# or Gb, and the littlefinger has to press two pads, 11 and 12, for some of the lownotes.

All of this sounds harder on paper than it is to make theactual notes when you have a saxophone in your hands.

When you need to press on the keys A, B and C, you do sowith the inner part of your left hand. In the same way, youpress down the keys D, E and F with the inner part of yourright hand.

Please be sure to notice that the higher notes of the scale(except the very highest) are shown at the bottom of thecolumns. The fingering for them is the same as for the notesshown at the top except that you have to press down the octavekey with your left thumb. This opens the key.94